Voices of the Fugitives: Runaway Slave Stories and Their Fictions of Self-Creation

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African American fugitive slave narratives are receiving growing amounts of attention for their literary and historical value. This book examines the techniques the slave narrative writers used to authorize and rhetorically create themselves in their writings. By examining such issues as voice and identity formation, the volume demonstrates how identity may be seen as a cultural fabrication. Former slave narrators used a series of masking and doubling techniques to address their experiences as African Americans. This book crosses the boundaries between literary criticism and historical study by examining the tensions between generic conventions and the impulses that created and reinforced them. The introduction and opening chapter offer clear and accessible discussions of the social, political, cultural, and literary conditions influencing the slave narrative genre. Subsequent chapters are built on this theoretical framework and present close analytical readings of The Confessions of Nat Turner, Frederick Douglass' Narrative and My Bondage and My Freedom, Harriet Jacobs' Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, and Running a Thousand Miles for Freedom, by William and Ellen Craft. The volume probingly traces the relationship between rhetorical self-creation and social ideology to show how that relationship was mediated within the fugitive slave narrative genre.

Reviews

.,."has special rleavance for historians...Thoroughly researched, clearly considered, and illustrated with state maps and pictures of frowning white politicians, this work is monumentally solid."-Civil War History
.,."offers new readings of narratives that are central to the U.S. literary and cultural tradition."-The Journal of Southern History
...has special rleavance for historians...Thoroughly researched, clearly considered, and illustrated with state maps and pictures of frowning white politicians, this work is monumentally solid.-Civil War History
...offers new readings of narratives that are central to the U.S. literary and cultural tradition.-The Journal of Southern History
[P]rovides a comprehensive examination of the personal narratives of a variety of people of African descent.-American Literature
This book can be profitably used in undergraduate classrooms or as an ancillary text.-Biography
"Provides a comprehensive examination of the personal narratives of a variety of people of African descent."-American Literature
..."offers new readings of narratives that are central to the U.S. literary and cultural tradition."-The Journal of Southern History
"[P]rovides a comprehensive examination of the personal narratives of a variety of people of African descent."-American Literature
"This book can be profitably used in undergraduate classrooms or as an ancillary text."-Biography
..."has special rleavance for historians...Thoroughly researched, clearly considered, and illustrated with state maps and pictures of frowning white politicians, this work is monumentally solid."-Civil War History

Author Bio

STERLING LECATER BLAND, JR. is Assistant Professor of English at Rutgers University.