I Was Born a Slave: The Story of Harriet Jacobs

by Jennifer Fleischner

Provides the inspirational story of a young girl who survived an abusive master and the chains of slavery in order to live to see womanhood and gain her own freedom in her later years. Original.

96 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1997

Reviews

[Jim · Rating 4 out of 5]

O.K., this is a Young Adult book, with very nice illustrations, only 93 pages long. But it's a wonderful story that adults as well as children should know about. It's based on the memoirs of Harriet Jacobs, a slave born in North Carolina around 1813. It reminded me of Anne Frank's story, as Harriet hid away in a cramped attic space--for seven years. It was quite an ordeal and, like Anne Frank, she had to fear that she could be betrayed to and found by the authorities at any time. However, she was not discovered by the slaveowners as Anne was by the Nazis. She was able to escape to the North and there she was reunited with her two children. Harriet wrote her memoirs, "Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl: Written by Herself," published in 1861, just before the Civil War began. She died in 1897. If anyone reading this is from Massachusetts, you should know she was buried in the free soil of your state, in Mt. Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge, Mass.
A wonderful job of presenting the story of an incredible woman thanks to Jennifer Fleischner and illustrated by Melanie Reim.

[Jan Priddy · Rating 3 out of 5]

I respect the story but found the writing uninspiring, and the illustrations are graphically compelling but not particularly illustrative. Harriot Jacobs was fortunate, given her slave status, for the first few years of her life. As an adolescent and young woman, she was pursued and abused by her owner [who did not rape her?] and hated by her owner's wife, who had every reason to fear Harriet might replace her. Whites failed again and again to keep their promises to her. She was at their mercy.

The author fails to provide the kind of context readers might have appreciated. It is worth noting that even free white women in her day could not travel or make most decisions without the consent of their husbands or other male relative. They could not vote, testify in court, sign contracts, or register patents. A woman who inherited property was often completely at the mercy of a custodial male relative. She could be beaten by a family member without recourse. She was as a child in the eyes of the law, and children had few rights. Mothers had no control of their own children, and in the event of divorce, the husband was generally granted custody except, sometimes, her temporary custody of a very young child.

Children could be schooled (or not) or indentured by their fathers (as adolescents in a contractual relationship that bound them to service for years, and for girls this was not a skill-based apprenticeship such as blacksmithing or carpentry as it might be for boys but as servants or farmworkers, or if lucky as a seamstress), and there was not usually (ever?) a minimal marriageable age for girls.

According to Twain, slavery was a "bald, grotesque, unwarrantable usurpation" of human rights. A White woman's experience two hundred years ago was as fraught as being a slave—not so bad, but certainly not safe. Her best case scenario was much better than what Jacobs enjoyed in her youth, but a free white girl's or woman's worst experience was nearly as bad. Recall that in Toni Morrison's Beloved it is a runaway indentured [white] girl who recognizes and respects Sethe's escape from slavery.

An early nineteenth century woman's life could be fine; it could be disaster.

The use of "master" and "mistress" rather than "owner" is likely historically accurate terminology used by Jacobs, but seems euphemistic today. They were not master/mistress in terms of employment or mastery of skill but slave owners. White women could and did own slaves, and so did Black men.

[Abby Turner · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really well written .