Our Nig: or, Sketches from the Life of a Free Black (Paperback)

by Harriet E. Wilson (Author), P. Gabrielle Foreman (Contributor), Reginald Pitts (Contributor) "Lonely Mag Smith! See her as she walks with downcast eyes and heavy heart..." (more)
Key Phrases: trance reader, Miss Mary, Pete Greene

Editorial Reviews

Review
"I sat up most of the night reading and pondering the enormous significance of Harriet Wilson's Our Nig." ?Alice Walker -- Review

Ignored by critics upon its publication and "lost" for more than one hundred years, Our Nig was rediscovered and reprinted in 1983 and is currently considered to be the first novel by an African-American published in the United States. It is a fascinating book which combines elements of nineteenth-century slave narratives and domestic novels and defied the social conventions of its time by portraying interracial marriage, child abandonment, cruel Northerners, and an African-American heroine who is full of energy, intelligence, and imagination, bowed only by prolonged and arduous toil. The story begins with six year-old Frado, deserted by her white mother after the death of her black father and left to live as a servant with the Bellmonts. While some Bellmont family members are sympathetic, Frado is treated like a slave by the mistress of the house and her daughter. By the time Frado is an adult she fulfills duties in "all departments - man, boy, housekeeper, domestic, etc." One by one, Frado's allies are taken from her, replaced finally by a man with whom "she opened her heart to the presence of love" - and who then deserts her. With an ironic, circular return to the beginning of the story, Our Nig is Frado's - and the author's - attempt to support herself and her child. -- For great reviews of books for girls, check out Let's Hear It for the Girls: 375 Great Books for Readers 2-14. -- From 500 Great Books by Women; review by Erica Bauermeister --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Review
"I sat up most of the night reading and pondering the enormous significance of Harriet Wilson's Our Nig." —Alice Walker --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 176 pages
• Publisher: Penguin Classics (December 28, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0142437778
• ISBN-13: 978-0142437773
• Product Dimensions: 7.5 x 4.9 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 5.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #522,689 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars buy it with the Foreman & Pitts introduction, May 8, 2005

By	anonymous "anonymous" (St Louis) - See all my reviews

Though I currently have the 1983 edition with the introduction by Henry Louis Gates, Jr (whose name is in the introduction for almost every important Af-Am text in circulation, it seems), I plan on getting this latest edition.

Until recently, biographical details on Wilson were limited. Indeed, they seemed to trail off soon after the publication of her book (a death certificate for her son six months after its printing has suggested to some that her call for support went unheard). This introduciton offers new and happier information, showing that Wilson lived a long life--in part as a successful lecturer on the Spiritualist circuit.

In any edition this is a great book. Really, "great" isn't superlative enough to cover how important and interesting it is. But if you're going to buy it, get this edition.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Slave of Northern Abolitionist but free, May 7, 2007

By	Tony Thomas (SUNNY ISLES BEACH, FL USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)

This book was written by a woman who was supposed to be a free Black woman. In fact she was treated like a slave, a Black wage slave. She was oppressed by a family of who were Northern Abolitionists. Yet, she was treated like a slave. Succeeding generations of whites studying the book denied her and her class the ability to write such a book: they claimed the book had to have been written by a white person and that it was a novel, not real.

Millions of Black women who have slaved in white kitchens and cleaning white homes during and since slavery have a spokesperson in Harriet E. Wilson. This book helps us understand not just to pity them, but to understanding their ability to fight back with their minds.

12 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars The North Wasn't Much Better, September 15, 2000

By	"gsibbery" (Baton Rouge, LA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Our Nig; or, Sketches from the Life of a Free Black, In A Two-Story White House, North. Showing That Slavery's Shadows Fall Even There (Paperback)

The female child of a white female outcast and a black freeman, the author gives a detailed account of what it was like being raised by a white family in the pre-Civil War North of the United States (a household where she was abandoned by her mother at 3). This biography gives a general idea of what a Negro's life in the North was like -- and it was not much different from that life of a slave in the South. The mistress of the house was brutal beyond measure, but many of the other family members were reasonably kind (though not kind of enough to put a stop to the abuse), and it makes one shudder to think of what could have happened in a family who had nothing but Negro-haters in it. Still, she recounts how she got a small measure of schooling, and how she eventually became a Christian (something which the lady of the house -- a Christian herself -- opposed) and her eventual marriage. An upsetting story, it is nevertheless of much more value than "Uncle Tom's Cabin" as it was told from the point of view of the victim and not a sympathetic white.