SLAVERY AS IT WAS: CULTURE, DISSENT AND THE PECULIAR INSTITUTION

Abstract

Harriet A. Jacobs. Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Written by Herself, Jean Pagan Yellin, cd. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1987. xxxiv + 306 pp. lllus. Sterling Stuckey. Slave Culture: Nationalist Theory and the Foundations of Black America. New York: Oxford University Press, 1987. x + 425 pp. Howard Jones. Mutiny on the Amistad: The Saga of a Stave Revolt and its Impact on American Abolition, Law, and Diplomacy. New York: Oxford University Press, 1987. ix + 271 pp. Five years ago at a conference on the study and teaching of Afro-American history, the eminent historian John Hope Franklin stated that [a]s a relatively new field, at least only recently recognized as a respectable field of intellectual endeavor, [Afro-American history] is alive and vibrant .... It provides ... a very important context in which much, if not the whole, of the history of the United States can be taught and studied. It also provides an important context in which much of the history of the United States can be reexamined and re- written. While it is true that Franklin was speaking of Afro-American historiography in general, the three books under review certainly serve to corroborate his point. Stuckey and Jones establish new vantage points from which to observe familiar topics and, in the process, convincingly place their studies within the social fabric of all of American history. Yellin's edited version of the Jacobs narrative proffers a rare, first-hand female account of slavery every bit as compelling and significant as the more famous ones written by men such as Frederick Douglass. Indeed, the Jacobs narrative powerfully decries the twin towers of oppression-racism and sexism-as no male-authored account could do.