Slave narrative
In the United States during the Great Depression (1930s), more than 2,300 additional oral histories on life during slavery were collected by writers sponsored and published by the Works Progress Administration,[2] a New Deal program.
[3] Some of the earliest memoirs of captivity known in the English-speaking world were written by white Europeans and later Americans, captured and sometimes enslaved in North Africa by local Muslims, usually Barbary pirates.
[4] Whereas the first narratives told the stories of fugitive or freed slaves in a time of racial prejudice, they further developed into retrospective fictional novels and extended their influence until common days.
[6] These accounts link elements of the slave's personal life and destiny with key historical phenomena, such as the American Civil War and the Underground Railroad.
The narratives are very graphic to the extent as extensive accounts of e.g. whipping, abuse and rape of enslaved women are exposed in detail (see Treatment of slaves in the United States).
C. A handful of testimonials and/or one or more prefaces or introductions written either by a white abolitionist friend of the narrator (William Lloyd Garrison, Wendell Phillips) or by a white amanuensis/editor/author actually responsible for the text (John Greenleaf Whittier, David Wilson, Louis Alexis Chamerovzow), in the course of which preface the reader is told that the narrative is a "plain, unvarnished tale" and that naught "has been set down in malice, nothing exaggerated, nothing drawn from the imagination"—indeed, the tale, it is claimed, understates the horrors of slavery.
[1]There is no consensus about what exact type of literature slave narratives are, whether they can be considered as a proper genre, comprised in the large category captivity narrative, or are autobiographies, memoirs, testimonials, or novels; nonetheless, they play a big part in keeping up the memory of slavery and in approaching a topic that was considered as a taboo for a long time – especially since many denied and still deny the existence of slavery.
[8] Given the participation in the 19th century of abolitionist editors (at least in the United States), influential early 20th-century historians, such as Ulrich B. Phillips in 1929, suggested that, as a class, "their authenticity was doubtful".
These doubts have been criticized following better academic research of these narratives, since the late 20th-century historians have more often validated the accounts of slaves about their own experiences.
Recurrent features include: slave auctions, the break-up of families, and frequently two accounts of escapes, one of which is successful.
Examples include: Following the defeat of the slave states of the Confederate South, the authors had less need to convey the evils of slavery.
Narratives by enslaved women include the memoirs of Harriet Jacobs, Mary Prince, Mattie J. Jackson, and "old Elizabeth," among others.
One example is the account given by John R. Jewitt, an English armourer enslaved for years by Maquinna of the Nootka people in the Pacific Northwest.
The Canadian Encyclopedia calls his memoir a "classic of captivity literature"[25] and it is a rich source of information about the indigenous people of Vancouver Island.
A manuscript copy of it made by a scribe named Omer in 1602 is preserved at the Hacı Selim Ağa Library in Üsküdar, and its text was published in the 20th century.
[28] Jackson, inspired by an interview with a former slave, decided to present the stories of previously enslaved people in a series of short films.
Jackson's aim is to document every single fate and hence approach the taboo of slavery, and keep the memory of the slaves alive through these videos.
The Underground Railroad by National Book Award winner Colson Whitehead takes place in an alternative version of the 19th century.
The renaissance of the postmodern slave narratives in the 20th century was a means to deal retrospectively with slavery, and to give a fictional account of historical facts from the first-person perspective.
