Tamaki College Library

I am on chapter 7 of a wonderful Audio-book called "Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl" by Harriet Jacobs.
It's so simple just sit back comfortably, close your eyes and listen to the narration, well I was instantaneously transported to the Southern states of America of 1860's when slavery was existing and all the atrocities of White people on Black Slaves was being beautifully narrated by the author herself. After sometime when my wife announced the dinner was ready I found out I was crying, it took me some time to come back to the present.
I strongly recommend this audio-book if you really want to know the slavery system which existed in America just 150 years ago, how the so called Christian people treated fellow human beings like a commodity worse than dogs.
Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl is a slave narrative that was published in 1861 by Harriet Ann Jacobs, using the pen name "Linda Brent." The book is an in-depth chronological account of Jacobs's life as a slave, and the decisions and choices she made to gain freedom for herself and her children. It addresses the struggles and sexual abuse that young women slaves faced on the plantations, and how these struggles were harsher than what men suffered as slaves.
Born into slavery, Linda spends her early years in a happy home with her mother and father, who are relatively well-off slaves. When her mother dies, six-year-old Linda is sent to live with her mother’s mistress, who treats her well and teaches her to read. After a few years, this mistress dies and bequeaths Linda to a relative. Her new masters are cruel and neglectful, and Dr. Flint, the father, takes an interest in Linda and tries to force her into a sexual relationship with him. Linda continues to thwart his attempts and maintain her distance. Knowing that Flint will do anything to get his way, Linda consents to a love affair with a white neighbor, Mr. Sands. She is ashamed at her discretion, but she knows it is better than being raped by Dr. Flint. During their affair, Mr. Sands and Linda have two children. Their names are Benjamin, who is often called Benny in the narrative, and Ellen. Throughout her narrative, Jacobs argues that a powerless slave girl cannot be held to the same standards of morality as a free woman. She also has practical reasons for agreeing to the affair: she hopes that when Flint finds out about it, he will sell her to Sands in disgust. Instead, the vengeful Flint sends Linda to his son's plantation to be broken in as a field hand.
Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl was not very popular when it first came out for many reasons, including the timing, at the start of the Civil War; after the war ended people were confused whether the book had been written by Harriet Beecher Stowe, Lydia Maria Child, or Harriet Jacobs. Since the book was written using a false identity, it was dismissed as being fiction. The historical opinion on the book until the 1980s was that it was fiction written by Lydia Maria Childs. The book really re-emerged during the 1970s and 1980s, when Jean Fagan Yellin began doing research into the book and author, and through the use of historical documents proved that Harriet Jacobs was the true author and that what she said in the book really did happen.