52 Books by 52 Women: Our Nig

For a year I’m reading 52 books by women authors whose work I’ve never read before. Click here for previous installments.

Our Nig; or, Sketches from the Life of a Free Black is a book I probably would never have become aware of were it not for the

52 Books by 52 Women challenge I took on for this year. I ran across it while doing some online research to refresh my memory about female authors I’d been curious about but had never read. I’d never heard of author Harriet E. Wilson, and indeed no one knows much about her. More than half of the 1983 Random House edition I read is devoted to historical notes and speculations about the author by Henry Louis Gates Jr. Read more