51 pages • 1 hour read
Hannah Crafts, Henry Louis Gates Jr., ed.The Bondwoman's Narrative
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2002A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
IntroductionChapter Summaries & Analyses
Introduction Summary
In the introduction, Henry Louis Gates Junior describes how he bought and verified the manuscript, called The Bondwoman’s Narrative, and researched the author, Hannah Crafts.
Gates purchased the manuscript at an auction held by Swann Galleries. Gates was attracted to the manuscript for several reasons, including that it came from the collection of Dorothy Porter Wesley, a highly respected librarian and historian, was potentially written by a slave, and that the routes described in the novel were confirmed as having been used by escaped slaves. Gates posits that it may be the first novel written by a female former slave. The text was entirely handwritten, thus free from the influence of an editor or printer. Gates wondered whether a work written by a woman and former slave would demonstrate a different perspective free from “the web of racist connotations associated with slaves, blackness, and the ‘natural capacities’ of persons of African descent” (12) that marked works written by white authors.
